Whilst

[Ronald Butters]

Americans borrow all sorts of variants from Brits. There must br Anglophiliacs  in Chicago who write "I might have done" and pronounce the H in HERBS and ask why lorry drivers are so burly. It means nothing.

On Jul 16, 2010, at 6:02 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> I sometimes say "whilst" and possibly always have. But I know better than to
> write it.
> I think it was proscribed somewhere.
>
> JL
>
> On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 4:11 PM, David A. Daniel <dad at pokerwiz.com> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "David A. Daniel" <dad at POKERWIZ.COM>
>> Subject:      Whilst
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> A while ago, TZ and somebody - don't remember who - had a tiff about
>> whether
>> Americans say whilst. TZ was saying they do not. I agreed (quietly - I
>> didn't write anything) at the time, thinking it mostly a Britism. Well,
>> immediately thereafter I started hearing whilst all over the place on
>> American TV shows. I thought: hmph. But then I thought: a lot of writers
>> for
>> US TV are Brits and Canadians as are many actors in the US. So maybe there
>> was dialect leak going on, with American actors saying
>> Brit/Canadian-written
>> lines, or Brit/Canadian actors saying whilst and not knowing they're not
>> supposed to. I was satisfied with that hypothesis until the other day I was
>> watching CNN and the interviewee, the District Attorney of some Podunk
>> county in Ohio, said whilst. So now I'm in a funk and don't know what to
>> think. Maybe he is another sleeper spy who missed the ESL class on
>> while/whilst and thus gave himself away, like when Tony Franciosa said
>> loo-tenant instead of leff-tenant and gave himself away as not being a
>> Brit.
>> DAD
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org